Tormented Kitchen

Hello, dear readers. Happy holidays! I think Christmas time is my favorite holiday. It's a time of giving and generosity. It's a time for family and traditions. We've put up a smaller tree this year, decorated the house with all of the collected nutcrackers, and started cooking up the old-time favorite recipes. We even sent a Secret Santa gift to an elderly gentleman at a nearby retirement home. Fortunately, (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) I've been cooking a lot of unhealthy but delicious things.  These things are irresistible and should only be eaten in small quantities because they make you pack on that dreaded "winter weight." But that is what New Year's resolutions are for! I've been making these marbled cake bars for years and they never had an official name.  I've snooped and found out that others call them Can't Leave Them Alone Bars. That name really has no staying power in my memory banks, so I'm ju...

Hello, dear readers!  Welcome back for a lovely recipe. In honor of my dear hubby's birthday, I baked up something special.  At first, he wasn't sure what to ask for, so he mumbled something about coconut cake, then a pie, then he settled on something rhubarb.  Our rhubarb patch was doing well enough for me to get some for his birthday dessert. He got a crisp instead of pie or cake. Strawberry rhubarb crisp with a hint of cinnamon and vanilla. It was heavenly! The middle daughter (the picky eater) was unsure about the stuff that went into the fruit layer.  I told her it's pretty much just sweet and sour strawberry, like sour patch kids. It worked!  I wouldn't say she loved it, but she ate some without flipping out.  I think we're making progress on reducing the pickiness. So for your dining enjoyment, give this a try.  It's sweet and tangy, sticky and oozy, buttery and crispy in all the right places. Ingredients For the fruit base 3 cups...

Hello dear readers! I hope you are all enjoying the amazing food specialties that accompany this holiday season. I have been on a pie kick. You could say I have been crazy for sweet potato pie.  Now, normally we have pumpkin pie with Thanksgiving Dinner, and that is the only time of the year canned pumpkin is in the house. Well, I always have at least one sweet potato lurking somewhere. I don't know what got me so fired up, but I just had to have sweet potato pie. So I made one, for practice. Then we ate it. It did not suck. So I made another one. That one didn't last more than two days. It may have been breakfast one morning. Then, I had to make one more so we could have pie for the whole family at my folks' house for Thanksgiving. After mowing down three of these babies in a row, I knew I had to post this for everyone to enjoy. Ingredients Unbaked single crust for a 9" pie, use either  Pie Crust No. 1 or Pie Crust No. 3 2 garnet yams or other oran...

Hello, dear readers.  We've had a great season for fruit.  The peach tree is absolutely drooping it's so loaded with peaches. One of my favorite things to make with juicy fresh peaches is ice cream! Mom used to make peach ice cream when I was a kid. It was basically vanilla ice cream with peaches mixed in.  Simple enough, right? Yes, but also so good! There are two versions of ice cream base that are good with peaches. The first one is a cooked custard base.  It is a richer, thicker ice cream with nice yellow tint from the eggs. It takes slightly longer to make this since you have to cook it and then let it cool overnight. It's super buttery and luscious. It freezes very hard and keeps a smooth texture. The second base is still really luscious without the cooking. It's a mixture of creams and sugar. I think I prefer this one. It's not quite so rock solid when frozen and it lends a really pure creamy flavor. The peaches really need to be ripe, dripping swe...

Hello, dear readers. Welcome back! My garden is growing at an amazing pace.  We started late, thanks to worries about frost. We finally planted things in early June.  I figured the garden might be a little bit small from having plants die in the heat, but we've actually had very little die-off. We have a single zucchini plant and it is producing at a good rate.  I already have enough that I used a few in the lasagna for dinner, a batch of this zucchini bread, and I still have a few that I haven't touched. Plus, there are more on the plant! Quite a while ago, I picked up this recipe off of a message board for scrapbookers. There are so many lovely people out there making beautiful creations, not just scrapbook things, but food, crafts, and things for the home. I've been too busy to keep up on the message board, but I did friend a many of those crafty people on Facebook so I can keep up with them. Now, on the recipe details. I've made a change to ho...

Hello, friends! I have something new to share. People who know me know that I'm a tea drinker.  I don't like regular coffee. I tried it ages ago, but it didn't hit the spot.  Once in a while, I might drink a fu-fu coffeehouse drink made with espresso and lots of milk and flavorings. So rewind back to last April, when I was pregnant with Natalie. I have no explanation for this, but I suddenly loved coffee. I would wake up at night dreaming of lattes. I'd fix myself an afternoon treat with the Keurig machine and doctor it with cocoa mix and lots of cream. My husband likes espresso and we'd talked for years about getting an espresso machine. It just happened to be a really low priority since I've been a tea person and not an espresso person.  Suddenly it made sense to me to get the espresso machine for his birthday so I could also have it to satisfy my cravings. Isn't that how marriage works? I got one of the Nespresso Lattissima+ machines. It's bee...

Hi followers! I'm back with an actual recipe!  It's one of my oldest, favorite things that I learned from my mom. It's the easiest and most delicious fruit dip. We even have a German-sounding made up name for it. We call it Frutenglasa. To say it, the last "s" has to sound a bit like a "j" or "zh" sound.  It's great with strawberries or fruit salad. It's great with watermelon when it's hot during summertime. You can even smear it on crepes or a puff pancake, add some fruit and have a very elegant dish. Mom has a top secret, special change she does to this recipe that I will share, too.  For special occasions, she will substitute orange liqueur (like Cointreau, Grand Marnier, or Triple Sec) for the orange juice.  My last batch, I only subbed 1 tablespoon of Triple Sec and kept the other 2 as OJ. This stuff is almost addictive. And I have even stuffed it inside birthday cake as a filling layer. Super awesome stuff it is. ...

Hello dear followers!  Is it really, officially Autumn? The weather is slowly cooling down, the days are getting noticably shorter. I suppose it will be Winter before we know it. Speaking of cold and winter, my daughter turned six last week.  She insisted on doing a Frozen theme. Well, my idea for executing the Frozen theme was pretty basic. I did not go all out like some of those mamas on Pinterest with way too much free time on their hands. I kept it simple. We gave out Frozen party favor baggies with various candies for the girls, and cars baggies for the boys. We gave her a few Frozen things as gifts. The cake was really the only thing that adhered to the theme. And I didn't even make it myself! I have been so short on time since school started! We ordered a half sheet cake from the Atlantis Bakery, simple white cake, white buttercream filling and frosting. I asked for light blue edge piping and darker blue text for "Happy Birthday Haley".  They offered an edible ...

One of my favorite things from childhood was eating fresh peaches from our peach tree. Back in Oklahoma, I had planted a peach pit it in our garden and it thrived! The tree was huge and just outside my bedroom window. We enjoyed sliced fresh peaches with sugar, peach ice cream, and peach pie. Mom always made the best peach pies.  I could never understand why people frequently added cinnamon to their peach pie. It covered up the peachy flavor. Fast forward to grown up Jenny and her house in Nevada. We planted our own peach tree a few years ago and it finally produced a nice crop of fruit. I devoured a few peaches right away, then we peeled and sliced the rest. We froze a bunch for later and made two pies. We even had sliced peaches and crepes for breakfast the next day! These pies were as simple as could be. No cinnamon. No almond extract. Just peaches, sugar, and tapioca to thicken the juices. And they were divine! Ingredients for one 9-inch pie 4 cups peeled and ...